The most important moment in the existence of the select committee of the House on January 6 is about to arrive.
On Thursday evening, the court will hold the first of its televised hearings. The event will take place at prime time and will be broadcast on almost all major networks and news channels.
For some, it will be the most dramatic congressional investigation since the Watergate hearings half a century ago.
Others, particularly former President Trump’s committed supporters, are likely to disconnect hearings.
Here are five great questions that still need to be answered.
What will we learn again about Trump?
Democrats are promising explosive revelations about the former president’s role in fomenting the attack on the Capitol.
Deputy Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) Promised in an interview with CNN on Tuesday: “Let’s see how much Trump participated. Trump led this program. He presented it from the moment he lost the election in November, and he did it with his son, or sons, and all his minions up there. ”
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), A committee member, told The Washington Post in an interview Monday that the panel had “found evidence of much more than incitement here.”
Raskin added: “I think Donald Trump and the White House were at the center of these events. That’s the only way to make sense of them all.”
Ironically, the main difficulty Democrats may encounter in filing the case against Trump is the large amount that is already known.
After all, Trump was ousted by the House just one week after the uprising, becoming the only president in history to be ousted on two separate occasions.
At a rally on the Ellipse near the White House, just before the Capitol assault, he told supporters, “If you don’t fight like hell, you won’t have a country.” And he also told them that President Biden, if he was certified as the winner of the election, would be an illegitimate president.
There have also been post-media leaks about other things the panel may have discovered, including the recent suggestion that Trump sympathized with the demands of some of his supporters to “hang Mike Pence,” then vice president in office.
There could be more shocking evidence. But the knowledge that already exists sets a high bar.
Can the court further incriminate the Republican Party?
The committee has only two Republicans: Deputy Liz Cheney (Wyo.), Who serves as vice president, and Deputy Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), Both staunch critics of Trump.
This leaves the GOP broader in the panel’s spotlight, especially if it can fix the guilt for specific fouls on other party members.
No less than 147 Republican members of Congress voted in favor of invalidating the election results in some form or form on the eve of the uprising, with remnants still smearing the Capitol aisles.
However, at the time, senior members of the GOP were willing to acknowledge Trump’s guilt.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) In February 2021 told the Senate that Trump was “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.” In a recorded call with colleagues later obtained by two New York Times reporters, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) Called Trump’s actions “atrocious and utterly wrong.”
But McConnell voted to acquit Trump of the impeachment charge in the Senate, and McCarthy made peace much more publicly, traveling to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump. Last week, Trump backed McCarthy for re-election to the House.
The GOP would rather talk about Biden’s dirty problems than January 6th.
But if the committee can present a convincing case with new and additional evidence, Republicans may have little choice.
Can Democrats put on a show?
For better or worse, the theater of politics matters.
So one question is how convincing Democrats can make audiences.
The first hearing is likely to be the most important of all, just as the first presidential debate in a series also tends to be the most vital.
The three major broadcast channels, ABC, CBS and NBC, have said they will set aside their regular programming and replace it with live coverage of Thursday’s hearing. So have CNN and MSNBC. Controversially, Fox News will not broadcast the audience live, but will limit this coverage to Fox Business.
Conservatives have been outraged by the committee’s decision to turn to former ABC News chairman James Goldston to help make Thursday’s presentation as compelling as possible.
Axios, who first reported on Goldston’s involvement, wrote that he was “busy producing” the audience “as if it were a highly successful investigative special.”
We are about to see the results.
Do audiences change the political agenda?
There is no doubt that Thursday’s hearing will overshadow almost all of Washington’s political news. At least for that night, it will be the only show in town.
But how long will this effect last?
Trump’s allies have promised “counter-programming” to push back the committee’s narrative.
House Republican Conference Speaker Elise Stefanik (NY) will begin the effort on Wednesday morning at a press conference with House minority minority leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) And Trump’s staunch allies. , Representatives Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Jim Jordan. (R-Ohio).
Stefanik told Fox News that she and her colleagues were “pushing back against the lame duck speaker [Nancy] Pelosi’s fake political witch hunt.
More generally, the White House has spent months on the defensive, facing a number of problems, such as inflation, high gas prices, the shortage of infant formulas, and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
The hearings will give Democrats a chance to put the GOP behind them, but for how long?
Can the panel change public opinion?
Politically, this is the biggest question of all.
Many independent experts, and even some liberals, are not at all sure that the answer is yes.
For all sorts of reasons, opinions around January 6 have been calcified.
While Democrats see Trump’s guilt as clear, many Republicans seem willing to reject anything the panel discovers.
Progressives win Democratic primary for New Mexico House seat Kean’s primary victory sets Malinowski resume
Meanwhile, a politically segmented media environment is combined with the dynamics of reinforcing the bias of social media to deepen these divisions.
This is not to say that the commission is wasting its time. The new tests on January 6 are important by their nature.
But it may not be enough to change your mind.